Fiscal transparency seminar attended by representatives of the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Regional Development of Ukraine

During the seminar led by IBS economist Jakub Sawulski there were presented Polish experiences in providing fiscal transparency. In the first part of his presentation J. Sawulski stressed the importance of fiscal transparency for effective citizen control over public policy and the credibility of the country on international markets. Further he has shown Polish regulations concerning the transparency of public finances and pointed out the advantages of the system introduced in Poland and areas for improvement. Finally, J. Sawulski tried to determine the most important proposals on how to ensure fiscal transparency. These recommendations were described basing on the Polish experiences in this area and the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund.

The meeting ended with a discussion, during which special attention was paid to the importance of institutions of control, whose aim is to care about the credibility of information on the state of public finances. The representatives of Ukrainian ministries also shared their own experiences in using simple IT tools to publish financial data by public institutions (applications, data visualization, databases) to facilitate obtaining knowledge about state’s finances by citizens. The conclusion was that some of the practices applied in this field in Ukraine could be applied also in Poland.

Participants of the meeting:

• Ałła Dyczenko – Ministry of Finance Ukraine
• Ołeksandr Kusznir – Ministry of Finance of Ukraine
• Wasyl Szkurakow – Ministry of Finance of Ukraine
• Zorjesława Frejszyn – Ministry of Regional Development of Ukraine
• Tomasz Piechal – Centre for Eastern Studies
• Jakub Sawulski – Institute for Structural Research